counter-terrorism

Marshall Erwin is currently a senior staff analyst at Mozilla, where he focuses on data security, privacy, and surveillance. He is an expert in intelligence policy and a co-founder of OvertAction.org, a web platform for current and former intelligence professionals to provide analysis and debate on pressing national security challenges.

Abstract

In a lot of Silicon Valley meetings, participants “iterate,” “ideate,” and “sync,” and do other buzzwordy things. Every once in a while something innovative and impactful comes out of those meetings. If more of those Silicon Valley innovations can be brought to the fight against ISIS, that’s a good thing. This seems to be what the administration is after in the recent meeting between senior national security officials and tech company executives.

FBI Director James Comey recently told the Senate Judiciary Committee that encryption routinely poses a problem for law enforcement. He stated that encryption has “moved from being available [only] to the sophisticated bad guy to being the default. So it’s now affecting every criminal investigation that folks engage in.”

"Speaking to Mic on Wednesday, Brian Nussbaum, a former intelligence analyst and an assistant professor at the University of Albany, agreed that it is “very challenging” to gauge just how effective counterterrorism efforts are. Still, he said, there are indicators — one of which may in fact be the method used in Tuesday’s deadly attack."

""In terms of large, structural changes, in terms of how people go in and out of these facilities, I don't imagine there are going to be huge changes," Brian Nussbaum, a former employee of the New York State Office of Counterterrorism, said in a phone interview."